


a certain kind of kind

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Bruises, Bullying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Real Events, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Admiration, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Prompto Argentum Needs a Hug, Prompto fights back, Secret Admirer, Secret Crush, Teen Crush, Temporarily Unrequited Love, brotherhood-era promnis, yes Ignis has a key to Prom's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 03:52:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16077821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Prompto's had a hard night and he thinks it's about to transition into an even harder day.(But fortunately Ignis may have a little something to say about the topic.)(That something may or may not involve being there for him.)





	a certain kind of kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notavodkashot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/gifts).



> After suffering some slight inconvenience during a Sunday night, I came up with the phrase "sword-like kindness" and KNEW it was an Ignis Scientia characterization for sure. And maybe Prompto would have been the one to feel it and describe him as such. So: this fic.

It’s a mistake, it’s the worst kind of mistake, turning the lights on in the tiny bathroom because -- complicated chain of events is complicated, involving the rain and the moonlight and the slow steady patter and drip of the leaking night onto the shower tiles, and -- Prompto drinks a little more water from the tap. Tastes the heavy metallic overlay of the lukewarm flow on his tongue, on his teeth, across his palate -- and his fumbling hand makes contact with the switch, golden-flare illumination that blinds him and then -- he blinks at himself, numb and silent, his reflection in the mirror staring blankly back.

The reflection and its -- bruises. His bruises, really, but he’s been ignoring the pressure of the pillows, the blankets, because at least they’re warm and they don’t hurt against his skin. They don’t make him feel any more hurt than he already is.

Cold, how he hates being cold, and some days he feels like he’ll never get warm, and -- 

Right now all that warmth, all that sleep, that had still lingered on his skin even after a rude awakening and the thirst winding up in his throat like thorns, is draining away. Fear, icy, trickling in to replace them. What are people going to say, in a few hours, when he ventures out the door to go to school? Purple-yellow-puffy stains in his freckled skin, the colors of his shiner, like someone had tried to hold him down and -- violate him, anyway, beat him, and he’d done nothing except gritted his teeth. He’d been silent all throughout. He’d taken it, until someone had made a terrifying joke about -- belts -- and he’d reached for the little switchblade he’d started carrying up his sleeve and flashed it out. Bright-steel threat, and the way he’d lurched to his feet and -- then lunged forward, nothing more than an angry tension, bared teeth -- 

The other boys had run, but every time they looked back at him he only saw their sneering faces.

He’d sagged against the wall in relief. How had that worked? How had the knife been enough? He hadn’t even been anywhere near as -- good -- as the others. Even Noctis knows how to carry a sword around. Has only been training with swords all his life. Him, and Gladio, and -- and Ignis. 

Not swords for him, of course. 

Though Prompto can remember catching him at the very tail-end of a spear-training class, the actual thing he keeps remembering is the sight of Ignis working through his knife forms, the brave movement of him, like the snap of flags on the wind, like some kind of dance on the same sharp edges he’d been carrying in his hands. The flip of the live steel, forehand to backhand, flight from hand to hand. 

The smile of him, nearly blank because it had been so small -- and Prompto still doesn’t know how he can remember it, how he can think of it. The tiniest twitch of Ignis’s mouth to the side, satisfied and still so -- hungry, Prompto thinks, in the here and now, having finally found a less-inadequate word for the gleam of fading sunlight catching on Ignis’s specs. Hungry like he’s still trying to find a way to be better, as if there were even a point to improving on perfection and yet -- that’s pretty much what he’s doing.

And Prompto -- can’t hate him for it. Can’t even make himself cheer him on, because there’s something else roiling in the back of his mind -- the part of it that currently isn’t fighting off the sobs of pain.

Prompto _envies_ him that certainty. That plain pure belief of -- he can be better, he can be even more perfect, he can do so much more.

How Prompto wishes he could taste that certainty, feel it crackling in his veins, feel it pushing him on -- but right now all he can actually do is stumble back to his bed and sit heavily, and the blankets have gone cold in his brief absence and he rolls himself up in them, and the last thing he does is -- pull out his phone and text because -- 

Tomorrow -- later -- he can’t even think about stepping out the door. He can’t bear the thought of strangers staring at him in pity, his classmates sneering at him if they even deign to notice the bruising.

 _I can’t come to school,_ he sends, to Noctis and to Ignis both. _I’m not feeling well. I don’t want to get sick, and I don’t want to get anyone sick._

There is no answer from Noctis, and that is a good thing, because it means he’s safe and asleep and not in pain and Prompto wants him to be safe and asleep and not in pain. He can talk to him in the morning. He can try to explain in the morning. He can face him, and he can try to still be his friend.

He dozes off and on the very last edge of sleep he thinks he hears the phone’s message notification chime -- he thinks he moves his hand to check, to look, but the night pulls him under.

And the next time he wakes up, he can smell petrichor, and traces of woodsmoke, and he’s torn clean down the middle between bolting upright in fear, and snuggling closer into that strange comfort and shelter. Weight that doesn’t belong to him, faint warmth seeping into him, and he sighs and inhales and this time he also catches a hint of something else, something like -- hot metal, a pan coming up to heat, fresh leafy scent and he bolts upright in shock because he knows who that could be.

Only one person he knows who smells like spear-edges and a long clean gleaming knife combined.

Movement in the door and he looks that way, panicking already --

His eyes and Ignis’s meet, and Prompto swears he doesn’t make a sound, only feels the rush of fearful air hitting cold and sharp in his chest because -- the lines in Ignis’s face tell so much. Worried furrows between his eyebrows, the downward pull at the corners of his mouth, like there’s a terrible weight and Prompto knows, knows he’s that weight and he grits his teeth and forces himself to keep looking him in the eyes even though all he wants is to hide, is to pretend he can’t see Ignis and that terrible sad look of him.

Some part of Prompto’s brain adds, what is the point of Ignis being sad anyway? And over him?

He flinches when Ignis starts toward him, and does fling up his hands to cover his face, and the sound that he hears out of Ignis in response hits him right in the guts, wounded and so small, that it doesn’t fit Ignis at all.

The bed dips. 

He can’t help but lean in Ignis’s direction. Only a little. He stops himself from trying to fall in further towards him. Ignis is -- just checking on him, on Noctis’s behalf. On Noctis’s request. Nothing else. Nothing more. Nothing to hope for. He’ll be gone soon, right? And Prompto can go back to trying to hide from the world.

“Prompto.”

Here it comes here it comes. He digs his own fingertips into his skin, a little more pain in the tender spots to keep him grounded, to give him the strength to focus -- 

He nearly flies off the bed when there are arms around him, strong and wiry and so gentle, pulling him into warmth, into the scents of clean steel and chopped herbs.

“It’s only me,” he hears Ignis say.

“No such thing,” he mutters in response. “You’re not _only_.”

“Neither are you.”

“Yeah,” he says, but not to agree. In fact he feels the opposite and the word is a pained negative. “You saw my face and you probably already figured out what happened. Judge me if you like. I know I’m judging myself already.”

“I saw your face. I don’t know what happened. Tell me,” and why is Ignis quiet and patient with him? He’s sharp with everyone else, with the people who know him, the people he knows. 

There are stories of the King’s Shield getting berated by this very same person, and Prompto believes those stories without reservation.

So what does he do with Ignis being -- not-sharp with him?

He has to look.

He has to know.

He looks.

There is such an odd expression on Ignis’s face. A look like a long-held-in sigh. Twist of his mouth, as though he’s trying to stop himself from speaking. (Not that Prompto would mind, if Ignis were to go off, not even on him. It’s not that he’s not going to listen; it’s that Ignis is soothing, is compelling, even when he’s nearly ranting, always well-spoken, always well-modulated.)

(Soothing, in spite of his intensity. Or maybe because of.)

Ignis’s expression: like he’s calling his knives into glittering crystal-edged existence, but also like he’s trying to say, “I’m here, I’m here, tell me, I’m here _with you_.”

And it’s the lines around his eyes, sharp and deep and meeting in perfect points, that make Prompto think of -- kindness. The arc of arms and the breadth of his chest, his perfectly pressed and creased sleeves against the clench of his fingers. Kind, gentle, holding him, keeping him here in this safe little space, like he’s important, like he matters.

So he tries to speak, and he says: “I can’t tell you.” He has to take a deep breath every time, because it’s not easy to put the words together. “Not because I don’t want to. Not because I can’t. I want to, and I can, but -- I don’t know why the words won’t come out.”

“All right -- and when they do, I will try to be here, so I can hear them. So I can hear you.” 

“Why?”

But he falls back against Ignis’s chest, because he’s tired and sleepless and hungry and so many other things, and because he’s weak, and he wants to stay in this kindness, because maybe this will be his only chance, his only opportunity. Might as well get as much of it as he can.

“Let me borrow your words because they were the right words,” he hears Ignis say. “You’re not _only_ , not to me.”

“They thought so,” he mutters. “They beat me up because I was, I am, only Noct’s pet pleb. And you know what?” He might as well say it. “They can keep beating me up, I’m fine with that. Noct’s got a rep to keep up, and you do it for him too. I don’t. I don’t care. It’s okay if it’s me.”

“It is not okay, Prompto,” and impossibly, Ignis is pulling him closer, when he’d been expecting to be pushed away. “It truly isn’t. I’ll look into it. I’ll do something about it.”

“You have enough to deal with,” Prompto mutters. “I won’t be a hassle to you.”

“You’re now repeating yourself; fortunately, I don’t mind saying it again. You are not a hassle. I want to do this for you. You deserve happiness too.”

“I’m happy enough right here,” he says, the first thing he’s been sure of in these hours, in these moments.

Ignis makes a small sound that he can’t understand, followed by a deep breath.

And then he adds, “I want to -- make it better.”

What the fuck is he saying? 

“What,” Prompto starts, and he thinks he might need to pull away. Because -- what? How does he process Ignis? How does he deal with him?

But that hold on him is very gently tightening. “Stay where you are, if you’re comfortable, please?”

And he can’t say no, even when he probably _should_ , because Ignis is more than comfortable. Because Ignis is safe. Knives and all -- safe.

It’s not until he wraps his arms around Ignis that he feels -- like something’s slid into place, like something’s gone right at last, like he knows what certainty means and it’s this closeness, this warmth, this safety.

“All right?” Ignis is shifting. Is pulling him closer.

“Don’t know,” he says, and it doesn’t even hurt when he presses his cheek into Ignis’s shirt. “Just want to stay here. Even if I know you can’t -- ”

Sigh, that Prompto can feel in his hair, warm and tickling.

He’s expecting Ignis to say something else; what happens, instead, is a brush of faint pressure over the top of his head, fleeting enough that he almost doesn’t catch the warmth of it.

He leans closer, instead, closer into Ignis’s chest, the sound of his heartbeat, the presence of him.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
